Tutorials 1 and 2 go over some very important basics regarding parametric modeling and data.Tutorial 3 builds upon these basics and delves into extracting live data through the use of the Mosquito plugin.

Grasshopper and Rhino Parametric BasicsThis is a generic tutorial regarding parametric modeling and data extraction. If you are not comfortable with parametric modeling then you should start with these two tutorials. These tutorials make use of New York city as a case study.

This tutorial deals with basic decomposition of geometry in Rhino and Grasshopper.

We look at creating geometry from point data in custom text files.

Manipulation and cleaning of data sets within Grasshopper so that we can extract the useful portions of data and use that to create spatial maps.

The tutorial also touches on the hierarchical system with Grasshoppers lists (flat and branched lists).

Towards the end of the tutorial we will look at how to download KML data from New York’s OpenData site and use that as an external data source and create a geographic mapping of this data using longitude and latitude points.

NOTE!!! The recording had a slight error in it and there is a slight sound delay between audio and video during the following segments:

21:00 and 35:00
1:08:30 and 1:20:00

The zip file “Tutorial1_CoreData_files.zip” contains Rhino, Grasshopper and reference files used in this tutorial. The tutorial also requires the use of a program called “KMLCSV-Converter” which can be download from the internet onto your personal computers (Windows only).

Tutorial 2 is titled “Visualizing Data” and this tutorial concentrates on a second example of how to extract data from NYC Open Data.The zip file “Tutorial2_VisualizingData_Files.zip” contains Rhino, Grasshopper and reference files used in this second tutorial.Files: Tutorial2_VisualizingData_Files

The tutorial is set in Johannesburg and uses train stations and stops within the CBD area as an example of geo point data from Google Earth. The Social media section looks for people that might be talking about issues or current movements regarding Taxi’s within a 5km radius of those stations and Bree St.

The tutorial runs through the process of locating geo co-ordinates in Google Earth, exporting all those points and then converting the resulting KML file into a CSV format. The tutorial then runs through a set of Social media plugins for Grasshopper that allow us to locate and track users in realtime in relation to the points we extracted from Google Earth.

The tutorial is about 30min long, but it moves fairly quickly, it should take around 2 hours with some pausing, rewinding etc… All the workshops are merely introductions into the different components and commands. You are encouraged to discover the rest of software as you progress.

Mosquito is a set of tools developed by us that allows you to extract static and live data from the net. For example, you can download maps of roads, buildings and amenities straight into grasshopper. You can also extract data from social media platforms such as Flickr and Twitter. To use these tools you will need the following:

Rhino v5

Grasshopper for windows

Mosquito plugin – http://www.studiosmuts.com/ceed3/mosquito/

Once you have these tools, install everything and then please make use of the Mosquitos included PDF documentation as well as the examples found with the download.

Studio Smuts

This site serves as the portfolio of two designers (Anja + Carson), exploring concepts in architecture, industrial design, furniture and social media. We are currently focused on product, media and Architecture.

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